the false comparison trap

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“As with events, so it is with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all explained from individual experience.”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Comparisons are a shit way of evaluating things.”

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Bruce McTague

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So.

We LOVE using the past to try and explain shit. Past people, past events, past words and past … well … everything.

When we are faced with something new, or someone new, we immediately start sifting through the scrap heap of the past to start creating some semblance of a jig saw puzzle to explain what we are facing.

There are a number of problems with doing this.

The biggest is that scraps are scraps. Oh. And the scraps used to reside in a completely different context <which is impossible to recreate>. And, yet, we continue to try.

The problem is that in doing so we elect to not judge the present on the merits of the present. We decline to judge a person as they are, the circumstances as they are and the decisions on the merits of what it is. We do this with everyone and everything … how money is spent, decisions we need to make, new people we have met and even leaders. We do it all partially well intended <we want to make sure we make a fair assessment of hat we are seeing & hearing> and partially because simply examining something and stating “this is good” or “this is bad” <or acceptable or unacceptable> seems … well … flimsy.

Comparisons tend to make things look more solid. And, yet, we tend to absolutely suck at creating the proper comparisons. And, that happens for a variety of reasons – also some well-intended and some not so well intended.

I will start with the well intended.

As Emerson once wrote: “our being is descending into us from know not whence.” And we struggle with that truth. It makes us uncomfortable … uhm … no … REALLY uncomfortable. If we don’t know where things descend fromthen we begin to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find comparisons to do so. this all comes at the expense of judging what is, the beings and such, on the merits of what exists. And this is where the shit hits the fan. We either dip into our own memories or a slew of people start telling us what memories to take a look at <the latter is part of the not so well intended>.

Well.

Here is an unfortunate fact … our memories, which is how we tend to judge and create mental comparisons, are constructive and reconstructive.

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“Many people believe that memory works like a recording device.

…….. our memory chip ……..

You just record the information, then you call it up and play it back when you want to answer questions or identify images. But decades of work in psychology has shown that this just isn’t true.

Our memories are constructive.

They’re reconstructive.

Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people. “

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Elizabeth Loftus

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“You can ask the universe for all the signs you want, but ultimately, we see what we want to see when we’re ready to see it.”

We desperately want to define things through comparison and continuously ask the universe for signs to show us what we want.

We desperately do so because in the absence of some comparison we would then have to judge what is on the merits of what exists — the good, the bad and the indifferent .

That doesn’t mean a shitload of people around you aren’t gonna try and affect how you will build your comparisons and encourage you to compare in some fairly creative <sometimes absurd> ways.

What do I mean?

I go back to the psychologist Ebbinghaus who studied memory construction <his published essay Über das Gedächtness in 1885> where he realized that memory and recall of continuous passages of prose or verse would be affected differentially by people’s experiences and prior knowledge.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Mario Vargas Llosa

What that actually means is that the memory you tap into to create the comparisons you seek are slightly mangled by yourself <in how you remember it> and can be manipulated by devious not so well intended people around you. The Constructive and reconstructive nature of memory:

Memories are distributed; not unitary

“remembering” involves retrieving and reassembling

memories can be revised over time

Reconstruction is filling in “missing details” on the basis of logic, assumptions, what “must have been the case”

More common reasons for forgetting: Lack appropriate retrieval cue = something you attach to a memory, can use to recover it>

Ah. If only we could pull out our brain and use only our own eyes. But, not surprisingly, this is the exact same issue new ideas, “white space” theories, fresh thinking, true <not made up> disruptive people & things face.

All that said. I will point out that something doesn’t have to be truly new to face false comparison challenges … it can simply be a new person in an existing role or a common problem or question just in a different time. Suffice it to say anything new, or any change, is being asked to be defined by the past. And there will never be a lack of people stepping up and suggesting they can define something through a variety of comparisons <many of which you spend more time trying to fend off than is worth the time>.

This is a mistake. This is a fundamental error we make. It assumes what is can somehow be extrapolated by something by what was <the past>. In reality, as I have noted numerous times, I cannot exactly extrapolate the past because I cannot exactly replicate the past … which means <in harsh terms> there is nothing there and nothing from nothing is … uhm … nothing.

Yeah.

Most comparisons end up meaning nothing <although they look like something>.

Yeah.

This means most comparisons we create are just plain and simple false comparisons. Without trying to be flippant with regard to what I believe is a fairly standard operating procedure for people … we need to stop. Stop false comparisons.

It is a trap. And a dangerous trap.

Comparisons normalize that which should not be normalized … just as comparisons can de-normalize that which should be normalized. False comparisons wielded by the devious can construct almost any “normal” you could desire <even if it is hollow & not really normal>.

Anyway.

In today’s world there does seem like there is a lot of crazy shit happening. And in our desire to veer away from the “crazy shit” feeling we seek some comparisons to normalize the situation <thereby calming the ‘crazy shit feeling>.

Just a couple of notes of warning on that.

<a> Finding comparisons, if done well, you can actually be convinced there really isn’t crazy shit happening even though there is truly some crazy shit happening.

As a corollary to <a>,

<b> if there is truly some crazy shit happening there will be no shortage of people ponying up false comparisons trying to convince you that there is no crazy shit happening <and some of them will be quite effective>. The only reason I point out the warning is that there really is some crazy shit happening and we need to stop finding comparisons to make today, and some people, look a little less crazy than it really is.

There you go.

I will end where I began … “Comparisons are a shit way of evaluating things <and people>.” We should invest the energy judging what is, people, ideas and things, based on their present merits not some false comparisons from the past.